An Industry Built On Suffering

Behind Laboratory Doors: The Hidden Cruelty of Animal Testing

In laboratories across the United Kingdom, beagles are deliberately poisoned. Half are expected to die. This is the LD50 test — where ‘LD’ stands for ‘lethal dose’ and ’50’ refers to the percentage of animals killed — and it is still used to test products like botox. The survivors, having watched their cage-mates convulse and die, are then killed themselves for autopsy.

This stark reality represents just one thread in a vast tapestry of animal suffering that occurs daily behind the closed doors of research facilities worldwide. Now, a ground-breaking grassroots documentary titled Born on Death Row aims to tear down the walls of secrecy surrounding animal testing, exposing an industry that operates largely beyond public scrutiny. The film raises urgent questions about the ethical foundations and scientific validity of these so-called testing labs.

A Grassroots Challenge to Animal Suffering and Institutional Secrecy

Born on Death Row represents an ambitious undertaking by first-time filmmakers Fiaz Ahmed and wife Jacqui, who run The Base Vegan Retreat and Animal Sanctuary on the outskirts of Bristol. The documentary’s title itself carries profound weight — these animals are literally born into a system where their fate is predetermined from their first breath, bred specifically for experimentation and an early, frequently violent death.

What makes this film particularly remarkable is its funding model and volunteer-driven ethos. Structured as a Community Interest Company (CIC), limited by guarantee, the project ensures that every penny raised goes directly toward the film’s mission rather than private profit. The filmmakers themselves are volunteering their time, putting every available resource into enhancing the film’s quality and impact.

The documentary has attracted impressive support from heavyweight figures in the animal rights movement. Featured interviews include Professor Andrew Knight, who specializes in Animal Welfare Science, Ethics and Law; Dr. Alka Chandna, Vice President of Laboratory Oversight and Special Cases at PETA; Wayne Hsiung, lawyer, activist and co-founder of Direct Action Everywhere (DxE); Rose Patterson, co-director of Animal Rising; John Curtin from Camp Beagle; and American musician and activist Moby.

Fiaz’s own journey into animal rights activism began thirty years ago, when footage of factory farming first opened his eyes to animal welfare issues. His involvement with Camp Beagle — where he and Jacqui designed leaflets, handled print distribution, ran the website, and even built a fishing pole camera that captured the first-ever footage from inside the MBR breeding facility — laid the groundwork for this more ambitious project.

“We’re taking a journalistic approach, really questioning what it is that the public are not allowed to know, and why they’re not allowed to know it.” Fiaz explains. “The legislation [Section 24 of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986] basically says you’re not allowed to know what goes on in animal labs. But we do want to know what’s happening, and particularly because some of it is publicly funded, I think we ought to know exactly what’s happening.”

The film, expected for general release in 18 to 24 months, focuses particularly on the industrial-scale breeding of beagle puppies and their use in toxicology testing. More than just an investigative film, it positions itself as a call for urgent movement toward transparency and modern non-animal methods, placing itself at the forefront of advocacy for much-needed scientific reform.

A Catalogue of Documented Suffering

Britches, a macaque monkey, was born at the University of California. He was taken from his mother the day he was born. His eyelids were sewn shut and a bulky, heavy electronic sonar device was strapped to his head, that made a constant screeching sound. He was part of a so-called experiment to test sensory substitution devices for blind people.

The cruelty documented by industry whistle-blowers and undercover animal rights investigators reveals a deeply alarming reality that rarely sees the light of day. These accounts paint a picture of systematic suffering that extends far beyond the inherent distress of confinement and experimentation.

• Charles River Laboratories, Scotland

At this major research facility, a whistle-blower revealed incidents that shock the conscience. In one case, up to 54 live rats, including pregnant females, died in a crusher after a box containing hundreds of rodents was taken for destruction in error — a catastrophic ‘mistake’ that speaks to the casual disregard with which these lives are treated.

Perhaps even more disturbing, rats being experimented on during an inhalation study suffered to such an extent that they resorted to self-mutilation, chewing their own limbs. One female gnawed off a toe from one of her front feet after five rats in the high-dose group were mistakenly forced to inhale a dose above the maximum limit. The image of animals in such extreme distress that they attack their own bodies is a haunting testament to the severity of their human inflicted suffering.

• Wickham Laboratories

An undercover investigation at this facility documented the notorious LD50 test on mice — a test whose very design ensures that half the test subjects will die. But the suffering documented extended beyond rodents. Rabbits were forcibly restrained by their necks in stocks for hours at a time during pyrogen tests, unable to move while researchers inserted temperature probes 7.5 centimetres deep into their rectums. These probes remained in place for hours while the conscious animals were completely immobilised, unable even to shift position to relieve their discomfort.

• St. Joseph’s Hospital, Ontario, Canada

In August 2025, two whistle-blowers exposed disturbing dog experiments at a secret animal laboratory inside this hospital. They described brutal experiments where dogs were surgically fitted with snares that induced prolonged heart attacks lasting up to three hours by choking off blood flow. These conscious animals experienced the terror and agony of cardiac distress for extended periods, all in the name of research.

• Imperial College London

At this prestigious institution, investigators uncovered what they termed a ‘catalogue of misery.’ Their findings revealed animals who suffered even more than was permitted under experimental protocols, due to staff incompetence and neglect. Researchers failed to provide adequate anaesthesia and pain relief, and breached UK Home Office project licenses that were supposed to ensure minimum welfare standards.

This case is particularly significant because it demonstrates that even the regulated system—designed to provide oversight and prevent unnecessary suffering — fails on its own terms. If violations occur at a prominent, well-funded institution like Imperial College London, what might be happening at less visible facilities?

The Legal Architecture of Secrecy

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of animal testing in the UK is how the law actively shields these practices from public scrutiny. The Section 24 “secrecy clause” of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 places a blanket ban on the release of any information from animal experimentation laboratories. This legal wall has effectively prevented open public debate and wider scientific scrutiny of animal research for decades.

Despite continued governmental commitments to transparency, this legal framework persists, creating what critics call ‘a culture of institutional secrecy’ that protects barbaric laboratory practices from public view. When concerned citizens attempt to use the Freedom of Information Act to learn about animal experimentation, the most commonly used exemptions to deny these requests come from sections 38 and 43 of the Act — further layers of opacity that shield an entire industry operating behind closed doors.

Why the Secrecy? Understanding Government Motivations

The question naturally arises: why do governments maintain such high levels of secrecy around animal testing? Several interconnected factors likely contribute to this institutional opacity.

• Public Opinion and Social License

Perhaps the most obvious reason is that governments and research institutions understand that detailed public knowledge of what occurs in laboratories would generate massive public opposition. Opinion polls consistently show that while abstract support for ‘medical research’ remains high, specific knowledge of actual procedures dramatically reduces public acceptance.

Animals experiencing prolonged heart attacks, rabbits immobilised for hours with probes inserted into their bodies, rats in such distress they mutilate themselves—these images do not inspire public confidence. They inspire revulsion and a demand for change. By keeping these realities hidden, institutions maintain a social license to operate that might evaporate under the harsh light of full transparency.

• Protecting Economic Interests

Animal testing represents a multi-billion-pound global industry. Contract research organisations, pharmaceutical companies, chemical manufacturers, and academic institutions all have substantial economic interests in maintaining current practices. Breeding facilities like MBR Acres in the UK supply thousands of beagles annually to laboratories worldwide, representing significant commercial enterprise.

Government secrecy protects these economic interests from disruption. Public pressure could lead to stricter regulations, increased costs, or even bans on certain procedures—outcomes that would significantly impact corporate profitability and funding streams. The revolving door between regulatory agencies and the industries they regulate further complicates this picture, creating potential conflicts of interest that secrecy helps obscure.

• Avoiding Scientific Scrutiny and Debate

Secrecy also shields animal research from rigorous scientific scrutiny and debate. If the full details of experimental designs, control measures, and results were publicly available, independent scientists could evaluate whether the research truly serves its stated purposes or whether alternatives might be more scientifically valid.

There is growing evidence that animal models often fail to predict human responses, leading to wasted resources and potentially dangerous failures in drug development. The pharmaceutical industry’s high failure rate — with many drugs that pass animal testing proving ineffective or harmful in humans — raises serious questions about the scientific validity of these models. Full transparency might accelerate the shift toward more predictive, human-relevant methods.

• Preventing Public Disorder and Protest

From a purely pragmatic governmental perspective, secrecy helps prevent the kind of direct action and protest that characterized the campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences in the 1990s and 2000s, or the more recent Camp Beagle protests at MBR Acres. If the locations, suppliers, and specific practices of all animal testing facilities were public knowledge, each would likely face sustained protest and direct action that could disrupt operations.

Section 24’s secrecy provision is – in reality – a tool for maintaining public order and protecting commercial operations from interference, regardless of the ethical merits of those operations.

• Institutional Inertia and Professional Protection

Finally, secrecy protects the professionals who conduct and oversee animal research from personal accountability and reputational harm. Researchers, veterinarians, and facility managers who participate in these practices operate in an environment where their specific decisions and actions remain largely invisible to the public and even to much of the scientific community.

This lack of accountability reduces pressure for individual practitioners to question their participation in harmful practices. It also protects academic and professional reputations that might suffer if colleagues and the public knew the full details of their work.

The Case for Modern Alternatives

The film Born on Death Row will highlight the growing body of evidence supporting animal-free research methods that are not only more ethical but also more scientifically accurate.

• Organ-on-a-Chip Technology

This revolutionary approach involves growing human cells inside tiny chips that mimic the structure and behaviour of human organs. These ‘organs-on-chips’ allow researchers to test drugs more quickly and cheaply than in animals while providing results that are directly relevant to human biology rather than extrapolated from different species.

• Organoids

These three-dimensional structures are grown using stem cells which develop into miniature versions of specific human organs. Unlike animal models, organoids are composed of actual human cells and can be genetically tailored to represent different populations, potentially revolutionising personalised medicine.

• Computational Modelling and AI

Advanced computer simulations and artificial intelligence can now predict drug interactions, toxicity, and efficacy with increasing accuracy, often surpassing animal models while requiring no suffering whatsoever. These approaches can process vast amounts of data from human populations, identifying patterns and predictions that would be impossible through animal experimentation.

A Critical Moment for Change

Born on Death Row arrives at a critical moment in the debate over animal testing. With scientifically validated alternatives now available and evidence mounting that animal models often fail to predict human responses, the continued use of animals in testing represents not just an ethical failure but also a scientific one.

The film promises to combine investigative journalism with expert testimony and evidence of modern alternatives, shining an unflinching light on practices that remain largely hidden from public view. In doing so, it challenges viewers to confront uncomfortable truths about what happens behind laboratory doors and demands that long-overdue change finally comes.

As Fiaz puts it: “We need to know exactly what’s happening in these labs, and we need a say in whether whatever we see continues.”

In a democratic society, surely that’s not too much to ask. The question is whether governments will finally embrace the transparency they claim to support, or whether the walls of secrecy will remain standing, protecting an industry that may not survive the scrutiny it has avoided for so long.

The beagles born on death row, the rabbits restrained in stocks, the rats driven to self-mutilation — they cannot speak for themselves. Born on Death Row aims to be their voice, and the hope is that soon audiences worldwide will have the opportunity to hear their story and decide whether this hidden suffering should continue in the shadows, or finally end in the light of public knowledge and accountability.

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Approximately 3 million animal ‘test’ procedures were carried out in Great Britain in 2024. It is assumed most died. 

  —  © 2025 Sul Nowroz  –  Real Media staff writer  –  Insta: @TheAfghanWriter